[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 545 - Wesker, Completely Dumbfounded

The east corridor of Spencer Mansion.

Barry Burton and Joseph pushed forward along a red carpet thick with dust.

The wall sconces flickered, dimming and brightening with no rhythm.

Not a living soul in sight. The silence was the kind that got under your skin.

Joseph swept his shotgun back and forth across the shadowed corners ahead.

Then the glass window at the end of the corridor exploded inward without any warning.

A black mass of mutated crows poured through on hammering wings, filling the hallway from wall to wall. Blood-red eyes. Barbed beaks strung with scraps of flesh from God knows what. The wind off their wings hit like a wall of rot and blood.

Mutant birds. A full swarm. If they closed in, they'd strip a grown man to bare bone in seconds.

Barry didn't flinch. He reached back and drew a military-grade Flamethrower.

The thing weighed a ton with the fuel tank attached. In his hands, it moved like a toy.

"Have a taste of Georgia's signature barbecue!"

Fire erupted down the corridor. More than half the hallway became a furnace in an instant.

The stench of charred feathers swallowed the rot whole.

Dozens of crows never got the chance to scream. They just dropped, black cinders hitting the carpet one after another.

In the security room, Wesker sat in his leather chair. His sunglasses nearly slid clean off his nose.

He'd assumed the large crate Barry had hauled in contained standard weapons.

A Flamethrower.

Since when did the Raccoon City Police Department issue military-grade hardware like that? The department's budget was so tight it squeezed every last penny on new body armor. So where the hell had these two pulled this kind of firepower from?

He hadn't finished the thought before the monitor cut to the central atrium greenhouse.

Plant 42 filled the entire screen.

A man-eating plant larger than a truck, its thick green vines whipping and clawing through the air, the tips weeping lethal corrosive toxin. One of Umbrella Corporation's proudest achievements in botanical bioweapons. Spatial awareness off the charts.

By Wesker's assessment, Barry's team should have burned through most of their ammunition just getting here. They'd be forced into a grinding, life-or-death close-quarters fight with nothing left to spare.

Instead, Barry tossed the Flamethrower aside and pulled an M32 revolving grenade launcher from behind his back.

"This thing is one ugly son of a bitch." His voice was a rasp. He squeezed the trigger.

Six high-explosive grenades streaked out trailing smoke and detonated across the base of Plant 42's main root in rapid succession.

That mutated plant, the one that could shred an Armored Vehicle, didn't leave so much as a last word. It became a shower of charcoal and green fluid raining across the atrium floor.

A few vine stumps were still twitching. Joseph put two slugs into each one. They stopped.

Wesker's fingers were trembling against the control console.

The test data. What was the maximum effective range of Plant 42's toxin spray? The crushing-force parameters on those vines?

Gone. All of it gone.

All he had gotten out of this was that a bioengineered plant doesn't like high-explosive grenades.

Which was a completely useless piece of information — what living flesh wasn't afraid of grenades?

He swallowed the urge to put his fist through the keyboard and switched the feed to the underground water treatment area.

Chris and Jill were descending a rusted iron staircase into a pool that came up to their waists.

The water churned hard. Somewhere below the surface, a mutant shark of terrifying size, code-named "Neptune," was moving fast.

A grey-white dorsal fin cut through the water like a blade, heading straight for them.

Top-tier predator. Bred specifically for hostile underwater environments.

Jill slung her rifle and reached back to produce an underwater high-explosive concussion grenade.

"Decent size."

"Judging by that dorsal fin, yeah."

Chris didn't retreat. He waded forward, reaching down to his outer thigh and drawing a high-voltage electric underwater speargun.

Another piece of prime hardware lifted from Leon's arsenal.

"Neptune" came at them wide open, six rows of fangs and nothing but hunger behind them.

Chris held his ground. Jill's concussion grenade went first, then Chris drove the spear precisely into the shark's upper jaw and jammed the high-voltage switch.

CRACK. Blue arcs of electricity tore through the pool in every direction.

The shark convulsed. Once, twice. Then its belly rolled up, eyes white, and it floated to the surface.

Second basement level. The two moved into the corridor and found Chimeras hanging upside down from the ceiling, monsters spliced from fly and human DNA, designed for ambushes in the dark.

They barely had time to show themselves. Jill's assault rifle, fitted with an infrared thermal imaging scope, picked them off one by one.

Armor-piercing incendiary rounds. The Chimeras became falling fireballs before any of them could close the distance.

Then the most outrageous moment yet.

➤ Next: Preparing the Faked Death